I dip my fingertips into color:
a hardened shield against the whiteness
of yet another winter day.

Though the heart beats more fully
at the sight of a snowflake's slow air travel,
I'm frightened I'll simply disappear into the blank evening.

But my shocking grip of deep plum-purple
holds tightly to an envelope containing your letter:
Ten blemishes secured to paper pale as the world.

And when this hue flakes off, just a little,
to color the wild-wind of Nebraska,
I remain: rimmed in broken honesty and thinking

About my hands that stretch out in fragments
to float with the swallows in a white sky
and stain the far-off snow of, say, Alaska.